Software made for astronauts and designed in Surrey finds alternative use in Game design

It was meant to help astronauts control space ships, but it has a surprise alternative use – Game Design.

The iKinema software was developed by the space research station at Surrey University and has been snapped up by big game makes 20th Century Fox and is now being used to help characters in games react more believably to objects around them. Things like gravity or other objects.

See the Youtube video above for cute examples of how it works. Check out the octopus!

They say “it has proved a brilliant way of animating the whole body of any creature in real time” it makes people more realistic, and lets bodies obey laws of gravity and balance.

Martyn Buxton-Hoare, Director of IKinema, explains the benefits of the technology: “By using IKinema, games developers can produce realistic, lifelike, fluid movement in games with minimal effort. IKinema can be plugged seamlessly into the animation pipeline to greatly increase the believability of characters and make them fully interactive with the scene.”